Sunday, April 1, 2012

Sunday Stills - Bird Stalking

Even here in the north country the birds are starting to return in hope of spring. The geese are back in droves, robins, starlings, waxwings and I’ve even heard a Meadowlark. Let’s get out and stalk some birds this week with our cameras.

I did actually go stalk some live birds the other day, but I like this bird sitting on the shoulder of Saint Francis just as well.

It was an idyllic location on the river. The light was nice, the goose only mildly perturbed with my stalking. He/she was gobbling bugs from the air and I got Completely Fixated with trying to capture that and it never crossed my mind to try for any different shots. Sigh.

This is the best I got. Apparently the rapid fire shutter burst capturing birds eating bugs falls under the same rapid fire shutter burst capturing sheep chewing their cuds. The shutter fires at the same speed as the chewing so you always get the same mouth open on fat sheep chewing cud and closed on cool bird gobbling May Flies.

If I'd thought to open up my aperture, this might have been a neat shot with the boat gliding one way and the bird the other. Completely Fixated.

Hank, a Pyrenees/Maremma cross, is in charge of farm security with new girl, June, an Anatolian, backing him up and Junior Deputies Miss Tilly aka Weaslie, a Corgi, and Comby, a tough orange cat with a heart of gold. Kate, a Border Collie, handles the rush hour traffic. Iris, our first Border Collie, spent her whole life trying to keep all of us in line, but that was a hard job. Her Corgi sidekick was always underfoot and the Adventure Chickens NEVER did what she wanted.